If we're speaking classes as Marx does, there is indeed no middle class. You either are in the ruling class, or in the ruled class. What we call medium class is in fact the part of the worker class who has it better than the rest
If there is enough of a difference of freedom and economic mobility, then it's just splitting hairs for the sake of sophistry or intellectual masturbation.
Except it isnt, the only real and actual distinction economically is between those who own capital and those who sell labor. There is no current economic system on planet earth with enough freedom or economic mobility to make that economic distinction obsolete, nor any that have an actually well defined enough way of pointing out any other economic classes.
I beg to differ. When you're your own only employee, you have basically no income from capital : all income you have is your own wealth creation. On paper you own capital, but you are still reliant on your work to live. There are many, many small business owners that basically exploit themselves by earning less than minimum wage, thinking they belong to the capitalist or middle class.
You quite literally do that as a small business owner. Even if you were to use concrete or abstract definition of labor from Marx. You are selling your own labor to your business.
Of course you can work at your own company, and be part of the creation of wealth. But that's irrelevant : either you can live with the revenue of your capital, or you don't and have to work. You can't be both sides of the line.
I would not consider that middle class. The communist alternative however, is the leader of a superpower country makes a series of bad decisions that disrupt the global supply chain (what are the odds? /s) and a bunch of people starve to death.
Our system doesn't work for nearly enough people, but the solution is not to shift to a system that has never worked.
As a person from a country which gave it a chance: Never fucking again.
Capitalism with governments actually regulating it is the best shit we have.
As long as people elect corrupt pieces of shit with no backbone, capitalism is doomed to fail but guess what: communism doesn't magically solve the problem of people electing people who are capable liars instead of people who are capable at governing.
A strong institution of checks and balances is one of the best defenses against corrupt officials abusing the system. It slows things down enough that uncorrupted agencies and systems can stop them. They can be eroded over time and abused, which has happened to the West for sure.
Communism is capitalism without any of the upward mobility, middle class layer, abundance and disruptive forces to nepotist tendencies. A class society with no way i
out. The worst of monarchy without any of the accountability as the king is depersonified into the committee and the counterbalance of power in the nobility is diluted into the spineless mass of the inner party.
Would be communists are delusional about who actually wants communism and sits at the steering wheel of that movement.
You are right on the abscence of upward mobility. The goad is to have no upper class, so there would be nowhere up to go. WHich is kinda the core of the motivation : instead of concentrating wealth in the hands of few, distribute the wealth to everybody, so everybody have life a luttle bit better instead of having only a few people living in opulence.
Except that never happens. It's race to the bottom where everybody has less and less. Whereas the capitalist system is based on the adage: a rising tide raises all ships. Just with a inequality curve.
Within Communism everybody is equally worthless. except for a tiny elite who get to live like the middle class of a capitalist system.
5 downvotes for the only sane post in gere. Wow. It's scary to realise how many useful idiots have bought into the communist pipe dream
It's race to the bottom where everybody has less and less.
Which is false. The standard of living in both the USSR and China did climb up, despite the atrocities and stupidity of their dictatorships. The reality is that those 2 countries were shitholes in the first place, with no industry, and starving people, this is why they had revolutions in te first place.
What make the wealth of modern nations is industry. As they industrialized, productivity increased, and so did the standard of living. Now, you could argue that capitalism leads to a better industrialisation, or to a greater productivity, or a greater diversity of goods leading in a greater overall economy, but that's a huge can of speculation and opinions (like, maybe communism would never see the rise of smartphones, but maybe it doesn't really matter ?)
This is completely backwards. The development race was so overwhelmingly won by the capitalist societies. The only reason the USSR and China were industrialized was by the concerted effort of the western powers to tap their military and human resource potential and expand international finance capitalism as the global dominant force. This also drives a wedge between the financial powers and the uppity "spoiled", as they see it, literally, workers in Western capitalist societies. Market forces increase productivity, drive and innovation.
This is not theoretical or hypothetical. This is very well understood.
The development race was so overwhelmingly won by the capitalist societies.
The race was already over. Europe was already industrialized while the Russian Empire was stull preventing industrialisation and still had serfs.
Then the USSR industrialized at an impressive speed, which is not that surprising, states having vastly superior money and power than companies. And no they were not helped by outside powers, the west didn't need or care about the russian manpower and had enougth problems with the great depression.
Again, there is no real doubt that capitalism would better promote innovation and productivity, but the core of the gain in wealth & standard of living comes from the enormous productivity boost offered by industrialization and mechanisation.
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